Brahms: Hungarian Dances The 21 scintillating dances that Brahms arranged (or, in three cases, composed himself) for piano four hands after Hungarian traditional themes have always been among his most famous works, and the orchestrations - mostly by other composers - are permanent concert-hall fixtures, especially popular as audience-rousing encores. Claudio Abbado's now-classic complete recording with the Vienna Philharmonic was made for Deutsche Grammophon's 1983 Brahms Edition and has stayed in the catalogue ever since. "The playing", wrote Gramophone, "has freshness and enthusiasm. It has delicacy and charm when required . . . together with warmth, eloquence and virtuosity . . . The spirit of what Brahms called his 'genuine gypsy children' is always in evidence." HiFi Stereophonie concurred: "It's all there: temperament, melting beauty, rhythmic bite, refinement - plus something more, a perfect balance between fire and coolness."

Rossini: Overtures Rossini's first big success came in 1812, when he was only 20. During the next five years, with comic opera triumphs like The Italian Girl in Algiers, Cinderella (La Cenerentola) and The Thieving Magpie (La gazza ladra), he became the leading Italian composer. He was also a famous gourmet. After William Tell's premiere in Paris in 1829, a cake was created in his honor, crowned by a sugar apple pierced with a sugar arrow. But Tell, his 39th and grandest opera, would be his last, though he lived another four decades. Today his most popular work is still The Barber of Seville (1816), perhaps the most perfect (and funniest) of all comic operas. Rossini's exhilarating overtures remained popular concert-openers even before the extensive revival of his operas in the second half of the last century - a movement in which Claudio Abbado played a major role. This, his second, recording of Rossini's most famous overtures features the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, whose lean textures, precision and energy enable Abbado to generate added fizz and sparkle in this already exuberant music. "Gestural clarity, pointed accents that make for real wit and even some surprises," wrote FonoForum.

Verdi: Choruses Verdi singled out Nabucco, premiered at Milan's Teatro alla Scala in 1842, as "the opera with which my artistic career really began". The stirring number that contributed most to Nabucco's wild popularity was "Va', pensiero", which became the Risorgimento's unofficial anthem and is still among the best loved opera choruses. That shortlist also contains other Verdi classics collected in this set of recordings orginally released in the 1970s, designed to showcase the incomparable chorus of La Scala - Italian opera's great shrine - under music director Claudio Abbado and chorus master Romano Gandolfi. The Penguin Stereo Record Guide wrote in 1977: "Superb ... quite the finest collection of operatic choruses available. The combination of precision and tension is riveting, and the recording is of superlative standard, offering a wide dynamic range, fine detail in the pianissimos and marvelous weight in the moments of spectacle. The diminuendo at the end of the Anvil Chorus is most subtly managed, while the rhythmic bounce of 'Si ridesti' (from Ernani) is matched by the expansive brilliance of the excerpts from Aida and Don Carlo, and by the atmospheric power of 'Patria oppressa' from Macbeth."